Learning from the WHO's Ebola Mistakes
Scientists Discovered Revelatory New Evidence Of The Bubonic Plague
Even having lived through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic over the course of the last few years, there's probably not a more famous disease in the world than the bubonic plague. After all, it's often literally simply referred to as "the plague." If your disease becomes so all-encompassing that just referencing the idea of widespread disease brings it to mind, your notoriety is pretty cemented.
For some time, the plague was thought to not have reached Britain until after about 2,500 years ago, even though it was present throughout Europe long before then. But according to new research, the plague was around in Great Britain a lot sooner than we thought—thousands of years sooner.
Two previously undiscovered mass graves have been unearthed—one in Somerset, England and one in Cumbria, England—and both were found to contain individuals infected with a strain of the plague from 4,000 years ago, marking the earliest evidence of the disease's presence in Britain. In total, the team found evidence of the plague in three individuals.
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These finding come as the result of a detailed genetic analysis project screening the unearthed bodies for Yersinia pestis—the bacteria that causes the plague. While the bacteria would not be detectable in many parts of the body, researchers were able to find residual evidence of its presence by looking in the teeth of 34 individuals uncovered in these mass graves. The core of a tooth, which is made of a substance called dental pulp, can hold onto remnants of the DNA of diseases.
"This research is a new piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the ancient genomic record of pathogens and humans, and how we co-evolved," Pontus Skoglund, one of the researchers on this project, said in a press release.
While this is the same bacteria that caused the bubonic plague, it's a slightly different strain. Specifically, it's missing the yapC and ymt genes. The ymt gene is especially key here, as it is known to have been important to the disease's ability to spread through fleas. The spread of Yersinia pestis through fleas carried on rats is known to have been the main driver behind the Black Death event that killed millions of people over the span of just a few years. Its absence from this strain obviously doesn't mean the disease wasn't transmittable, as multiple bodies in the burial sites were infected—just that it spread by a slightly different mechanism.
Interestingly–according to a more comprehensive analysis of the bodies containing the Yersinia pestis strain—individuals from the Somerset mass graves don't seem to have died from the plague, even thought they were infected. Instead, they seem to have died from unrelated trauma. While other bodies in the burial site could have been infected, the research team believes this was not a burial site specifically for plague victims. The mass grave and the presence of the bubonic plague, amazingly, may have just been a coincidence.
Coincidence or not, new information on one of the biggest tragedies of all time is always welcome and informative.
"We understand the huge impact of many historical plague outbreaks, such as the Black Death, on human societies and health, but ancient DNA can document infectious disease much further into the past," Skoglund said in a news release. "Future research will do more to understand how our genomes responded to such diseases in the past, and the evolutionary arms race with the pathogens themselves, which can help us to understand the impact of diseases in the present or in the future."
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Jackie is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania. She's especially fond of writing about space and physics, and loves sharing the weird wonders of the universe with anyone who wants to listen. She is supervised in her home office by her two cats.
Bubonic Plague 'making Comeback' - And Only Certain People Will Survive It
The bubonic plague is making a terrifying comeback, according to experts.
In the 1300s, the Black Death wiped out an estimated 60 per cent of Europe's population. It was so cataclysmic that some studies linked it to the Little Ice Age, which is thought to have been caused by millions trees springing up on farmland abandoned by the dead.
Dr Anna Popova, Russia's top doctor, warned of the threat - claiming the long-dormant illness was fast becoming a "risk" to public health because of global warming.
Speaking in 2021, Dr Popova warned that the Black Death could make a return as global temperatures rose towards concerning levels.
The East Smithfield plague pits, which were used for mass burials in 1348 and 1349 (Image:
PA)She said: "We do see that the borders of plague hotspots have been changing with global warming and climate change, and other anthropogenic effects on the environment.
"We are aware that cases of plague in the world have been growing.
"This is one of the risks on today's agenda."
As the risk continues to grow, with Russia, China and the US reporting outbreaks in recent years, Dr Popova claimed that a rapid response to outbreaks in fleas was essential to stop the spread to humans.
This is because the bubonic plague is a bacterial disease spread by fleas living on wild rodents and can kill an adult in less than 24 hours if not treated in time.
The United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF recently warned about a resurgence in Africa, and a month earlier the discovery of bubonic plague led to the cancellation of the Mongolian leg of the Silk Way Rally.
The country has suffered a number of outbreaks in recent years.
Russia last year took major steps to stop a spread of the Black Death across its frontiers with Mongolia and China.
One outbreak was recorded on the Ukok plateau of the Altai Mountains in Russia - for the first time in more than 60 years.
The plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, a zoological bacteria found in small mammals and their fleas, and historic remnants have been found in two locations in the UK.
Two instances were discovered in a mass burial site in Somerset, and another was found in a ring cairn monument in Cumbria.
The Plague had a devastating impact around the globe, and signs were later found in many places - including this inscription from the Chu-Valley region in Kyrgyzstan (Image:
A.S. Leybin, August 1886 / SWNS) Evidence has now been found in the UK (Image:
PA)A team of researchers from the Francis Crick Institute, alongside experts from the University of Oxford, the Levens Local History Group and the Wells and Mendip Museum, teamed up to take samples from 34 skeletons.
They were looking for signs of Yersinia pestis in teeth, as dental pulp traps the DNA of infectious diseases.
Speaking to the BBC, Pooja Swali, first author and PhD student at the Crick, said: "The ability to detect ancient pathogens from degraded samples, from thousands of years ago, is incredible.
"These genomes can inform us of the spread and evolutionary changes of pathogens in the past, and hopefully help us understand which genes may be important in the spread of infectious diseases.
"We see that this Yersinia pestis lineage, including genomes from this study, loses genes over time, a pattern that has emerged with later epidemics caused by the same pathogen."
Meanwhile, investigations have also revealed how and why certain people can survive the plague, while others perish.
The Yersinia pestis bacteria causes the plague (Image:
Getty Images)A recent study analysed the DNA of centuries-old skeletons and discovered a freak mutation that helped people survive the often-fatal disease.
Scientists looked at bones from the East Smithfield plague pits which were used as mass graves as the number of dead outstripped the capability to bury them.
Other samples came from Denmark, and the study was published in the journal Nature.
It found that if you had the right mutations - linked to a gene called ERAP2 - you were over 40 per cent more likely to survive the plague.
Professor Luis Barreiro, from the University of Chicago, told The BBC: "That's huge, it's a huge effect, it's a surprise to find something like that in the human genome."
ERAP2 is responsible for making the proteins which break up invading microbes and then show the remnants to the immune system, allowing it to recognise it and respond more effectively in the future.
However, whilst some people had high-functioning versions of the gene, others didn't.
Those that didn't were more likely to die, whereas those with the mutation survived, had children, and passed on the helpful mutation which became more and more common as a result.
Evolutionary geneticist Professor Hendrik Poinar, from McMaster University, said: "It's huge we see a 10 per cent shift over two to three generations, it's the strongest selection event in humans to date."
But whilst those mutations helped hundreds of years ago, they are also linked to auto-immune diseases that affect people today.
Researchers have previously suspected that an event of such magnitude would have shaped human evolution.
The World Health Organization warned that a deadly outbreak of the plague had claimed more than 20 lives in Madagascar in 2017 (Image:
AFP/Getty Images)The news comes as it is reported that tuberculosis is overtaking Covid-19 as the world's most deadly infectious disease, with experts warning it poses a threat to the UK.
The Mirror joined the frontline in the battle against the bug in Africa, where the biggest ever TB clinical trial is being set up to tackle the hidden pandemic.
British Professor Robert Wilkinson is leading a global call to find a one-shot vaccine with research institutions in the US, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Ivory Coast.
Currently, medication takes at least six months, and if drugs are stopped early it can come back in a much more deadly drug-resistant form.
The NHS stopped offering the BCG vaccine against TB to all children in 2005, instead targeting only children who may travel to badly-affected countries. However, immunity does not last past the teenage years.
The US employs a similar approach with the BCG, but is on track to eradicate the bug due to heavy investment and contact tracing during outbreaks.
Some fear we could face another outbreak (Image:
AFP/Getty Images)We spoke to TB survivors in the South African township of Khayelitsha, which has one of the highest rates of drug-resistant TB in the world.
This is the focus of a clinic run by Prof Wilkinson, of London's Francis Crick Institute. He said: "It's inevitable TB will be the most deadly infectious disease in the world again.
"The proportion of resistant TB is gradually increasing everywhere and that is a problem in Europe too.
"We should ensure that all legal and illegal arrivals to the UK have access to health care and, if necessary, screening and early treatment.
"Even if they are detained for illegal arrival, they have a right to care and it is advantageous for the UK to provide that."
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Read More Read More Read More Read More Read MoreScientists Find Evidence Of The Bubonic Plague In Bronze Age England - Study
The bubonic plague was already circulating in Britain long before the medieval Black Death, according to new research out of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, England.
Extinct lineages of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium which causes the plague, have been found in multiple sets of human remains from Eurasia between 5,000 and 2,500 years ago, according to a peer-reviewed study recently published in Nature Communications.
One such lineage, dubbed LNBA (Late Neolithic and Bronze Age), has been identified in three sets of remains from Britain each dating to approximately 4,000 years ago, representing the earliest documented evidence of the LNBA plague in Britain. The LNBA lineages were likely introduced to central and western Europe approximately 4,800 years ago by human migration from the Eurasian Steppe.
The plague was seemingly widespread due to migrationResearchers were able to show evidence that suggests that the LNBA lineage could have been widespread in Britain due to that westward migration.
They sampled 34 distinct sets of remains from two sites dating back to the early Bronze Age - Charterhouse Warren (south of Bristol) and Levens Park, which lies along the River Kent in the Lake District. Sampling teeth from the ancient remains, researchers screened for the presence of LNBA Yersinia pestis.
Scanning electron micrograph of Yersinia pestis, which causes bubonic plague, on proventricular spines of a Xenopsylla cheopis flea National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (credit: Wikimedia Commons)The presence of the bacterium was detected in a 35-45-year-old woman at the Levins Park site, who was found in a crouched position accompanied by pottery shards. It was also found in two individuals, aged approximately 12 and 10 years old, at the Charterhouse Warren site, which is a mass burial of assorted human remains likely deposited together at the same time.
All of these sets of remains dated back to the Bronze Age, thus showing that the bacteria was active then in England. Researchers noted that the frequency of the bacterium occurring in their sample was quite high (three out of 34, or 9% of samples). However, they emphasized the real frequency could be lower than the observed frequency, and there is also a chance that other individuals were infected but turned up false negatives in archaeologists' tests.
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